Happy Reading
by Aleauxvander
Summary: Apparently she tasted like, of all things, soy-ice cream. But of course Artemis would know, wouldn't he?... A lesson in taste, lust, sex and pointless novels. Artemis/Holly


**I own nothing but this plot and some random, pointless details. Review and tell me what you think.**

**After a long spell of silence, I have reappeared. Its odd. I seem to resurface and publish work only when I have exams to do, final work to hand in and the rest of my life riding on the line. Here's to a blessed distraction from the chaos that is my mind.**

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Summary: Apparently she tasted like soy-ice cream. But of course Artemis would know, wouldn't he... A lesson in taste, lust, sex and pointless novels.

**Title: Happy Reading**

_By: AleauxVander B.D_

He didn't know why she even picked it up in the first place but it was Holly. He could only assume there was a method to her madness or some written code in the dead languages of the world as to why women, human and fairy alike, liked to _do things they obviously disliked_ then _complained about it_.

He noticed when she picked up the light novel from the desk in his library before they left for the movie room. It was sitting at the edge of the expanse of wood, away from the tottering piles that littered the desk and maybe its solitude was what called to her. But he hadn't called her out on it. She had picked it up, frowned at the vague and ill-written synopsis at the back and then snorted mockingly at the cover of a bronzed, steroid-buffed Adonis griping the pale, beautiful dark haired woman to his chest.

He smiled to himself at her displeasure knowing full well that anything vaguely resembling stereotyping or sexism annoyed her. It had little to do with the convention of the time the books were written in and more to do with just how _pointless_ and sexed-up they all tended to be. He couldn't wrong her, he had to agree himself. Modern literature had taken a nose dive into something more like phonetic scripts and declarations of passion and lust than the actual building of relationships and emotion. It was just sex. Sex sold and sold well and he couldn't blame frantic writers who realized their works went unnoticed because of its lack of sex appeal.

However some of the novels he perused simply out of boredom and a want for research material were crap, and to put it simply, almost archaic. On more than one occasion when Holly noted that he wrote and critiqued modern romantic pieces he had told her his opinion on the literatures of this day and age and he had assumed she felt the same.

And within the silence of the movie room, while the television played and they both ignored it for other pursuits- he was busy with his laptop and she was busy with, surprise, the novel she had picked up- she suddenly spoke, thumbing the book to keep her page number while she turned it to look at the cover.

"Mud man literature sucks," she said plainly and without tact.

He didn't look up from his computer, continued his covert surveillance of one of his father's shipping company's enemy and hardly raised his voice above a disinterested mutter.

"The word 'literature' would mean it actual had plot and point."

She set aside the bowl of soy-based ice-cream on the coffee table before them and curled her feet under her on the couch, skipping pages.

"True." She agreed. "But surely this is a crime—" she paused to find the page and paragraph and cleared her throat as she read "and I quote '_…she was supple and soft, warm in the firelight and her skin tasted of rich chocolate…'_ half the time I'm reading this, I'm not sure whether their condoning cannibalism or some archaic ritual of sacrificing the virgins to full moons."

He looked up then at the slightly horrified expression on her face as she skimmed through the book. "It isn't that bad…" he told her "I've certainly read worst."

Her eyebrows lifted, almost disappearing beneath her hairline, offering the book to him and he knew without a doubt hat she may not have been exaggerating.

"You want to read it?" she asked.

He eyed the aforementioned book and while the aim was for him to gather information to form a thesis about modern literature, Holly had painted a gruesome and a less than appealing picture of the novel already and he felt no force drawing him towards poorly written, tasteless sex.

"No thank you." He said laughingly.

"Good, save yourself," she said and contradictorily, as women did he supposed, went back to reading said same book she was complaining about. "It's nothing but shameless smut. Badly written, shameless smut."

"Sex sells." He said in explanation.

She scoffed, "Don't I know it." She said "but even sex has a plot most times, a reason or a rhyme. This glorified _Adonis_ they have in this book takes her on any available surface at any hour for no particular reason." Then as if to prove the point picked up her spoon and fed herself ice-cream "they ate ice-cream-lets have sex, the war has ended!-lets have sex, a child was born next door?-lets have sex." She shuddered and scowled at him when he laughed at her theatrics.

"I think this has put back even our civilization a few million years into the days of '_Me, man, you woman, let us populate earth'_ mentality." She groused.

She was working herself up over a simple novel and he couldn't hide how entertained he was. He simply smiled in her direction to appease her apparent discontentment which only seemed to fuel the fire.

"Tell me you agree." She ordered.

"I do," he said honestly "but it's neither here nor there to me. It's just a book."

Holly rolled her eyes at his disinterest and set aside the book, turning to face him on the couch.

"It surprises me that staunch feminist haven't rioted over these things before."

"Many have," he corrected her "but they mostly go ignored. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of press and such."

"Excuses." Holly supplied, "of all the things written in that book, the most insulting and ridiculous thing was the sanctioning of cannibalism. _Her skin tasted of rich chocolate_?"

"Edible lotions?" Artemis supplied with a grin.

She hit him with the pillow she held to her chest as punishment. He took the weapon from her and threw it across the room from her reach.

"Cannibalism." She insisted. "People don't have particular tastes. We smell differently, yes, but we don't taste differently. How would someone know?"

He, in turn, raised a sardonic eyebrow.

"Modern romantic literature has so many tactless, crass ways of twisting the simple idea of someone having a particular _taste_."

She took up the book and waved it. "I've been made well aware!"

"Scent is one thing and taste is another," he tried to explain his thoughts "for example, invariably, whatever the circumstances, you smell like mangos—"

Maybe it was the thought that somehow he put a name to her scent or that he was observant enough to notice something so trivial, but she suddenly laughed at his comment as though it wasn't true.

"I'm being serious. Mangos and citrus; quiet a potent and heady scent. But it's mostly pheromones. Normal women don't exude as many as fairy women seem to."

She smiled "So how is it you've never commented on Opal Koboi before? Or Commander Vinyaya for that matter?"

He gave her a horrified look, as though the very thought scared him.

"Attractive scents, pheromones and lust are the last things I want to think about in Koboi's presence, I can assure you. The same goes for the Wing Commander."

She could attest to that. Both women tended to scare the male population into impotency.

"I hear you," she said lifting her hands in mock resignation "but you can't tell me you don't think it's ridiculous. I might smell like mangos and citrus as you say but it doesn't mean I taste like it."

"Did you ever stop to consider that the writer could be talking about the heroine's lips?" he asked dryly.

She narrowed her eyes at him and when he laughed mocked him.

"Funny. I'm not a child, Artemis, of course it thought about it. The same, insipid archetypal males they always portray have it in their minds that their bewitching beauty smelled like chocolate, her skin looked like chocolate and thus she should taste like chocolate."

"It looks like a duck, walks like a duck, smells like a duck…"

"You're not helping." She said flatly.

He grinned, his charming little grin and smoothed her hair back, a highly affectionate act she hadn't expected from him and had experienced so few times in all the years she knew him and for a moment she was blindsided by it. The hand in her hair stilled and left, slowly, trailing to tug gently at the ends of her hair.

"It's a pointless book created for romantics who dream of barely clad men sweeping them away into a world without troubles. If it makes readers happy who are we to question?"

It wasn't the integrity behind the actual writing that puzzled her, it was how these books, nothing but pages of sexual fantasies and liaisons in forests, rivers , on rocks, on staircase banisters and frond knows where else, actually sold. She felt as if the author was insulting her intelligence.

"Women don't seem to mind them. This copy—" he picked up the book and examined the cover page "— was actually recommended by Juliet."

Holly's face was one of clear disbelief.

"She didn't read it, of course, but she chose it for me. I hardly see Juliet avidly reading a book about a King's mistress and all her womanly attributes succumbing to the charms of his smile and a promise. It is, in fact, insulting."

"Ha! You agree." She sent him a beautiful smile that stunned him and he rolled his eyes, resorting to being childish, sitting back against the couch as though exhausted.

"It's a book, Holly." He reiterated "fiction or not, most fictional works are based from something that is plausible."

"Yes," she said sarcastically "I'm sure the woman tasted quiet literally like chocolate and I taste like mangos and citrus."

"You're splitting hairs." He said nonplussed.

A delicate shrug, "I don't think I am."

"Of course not…" He deadpanned.

He looked thoughtful for a moment, as if staring at his mind's eye and trying to understand the mysteries of the world before he, nimbly, set aside the laptop and shrugged as if he hadn't a care in the world. Silently, alarms rose in her head but Holly could find no reason as to why she would be apprehensive about whatever Artemis had in mind.

"Alright." He said after the silence and his vague, almost monosyllabic retort left her reeling.

She frowned, confused at his sudden unresponsiveness.

"'_Alright'_ to what? Yes, you agree with me or yes you _don't_ agree with me—"

She was distracted for a time into silence, watching his long pale finger move forward between them to twist the drooping neckline of her borrowed shirt in his grip and pulled her forward easily and he kissed her and for a moment, stunned and unresponsive as his lips moved over hers, her brain flat lined.

It took less time for the insurmountable shudder of sheer _pleasure_ to wash over her, hitting her like a battering ram before she returned the kiss with a desperate kind of need than it took for her to equate this sickeningly amazing feeling the prolonged contact generated was courtesy of Artemis, of all people.

And while her mind would later question and her stomach would clench painfully in some form of sick masochistic pleasure as to where the hell he learned to do this to women, she could hardly breathe and would have sacrificed her life to never breathe again to experience what she felt now over and _over_ again.

But then he tilted his head and deepened the kiss and her mind clouded and the spineless, brainless whimper left her lips and fueled by her response he decided to break her brain.

So Artemis Fowl II, genius mastermind, all of 21 years had her pinned easily and limply without thought or inclination to even protest, beneath him, his tongue raking against the roof of her mouth, tasting her so thoroughly, wiped her mind clean within seconds as his hands eased up her thighs to her waist.

And suddenly, the thought shattering warmth, suction and taste was gone and he lifted his head, licked his lips thoughtfully before frowning.

He nodded only afterwards, looking for all as though he had answered all of life's questions before saying, almost disillusioned.

"You're right." He said definitively "you don't taste like mangos and citrus." Silence in which she only stared up beneath him and the young man shrugged. "You taste like soy ice cream."

And when she only stared up at him, he kissed her again to render her speechless, climbed from on top of her and sat back in his seat, picking up his discarded work as though he had just returned from playing chess. Blank.

"You're ice-cream melted…" he noted backhandedly before handing her the book "here. Happy reading."

Shakily, the only word to describe her near restless, jittering hands, she took the book from him, and he opted to continue his work on the laptop on his knees.

In silence.

Holly stared and in that time, nothing came to her mind amidst all the things she could have been annoyed by and she threw the book at his head.

He miraculously ducked it and the high, sibilant sound of it skidding across tiled floors disappeared across the room.

"I said read it not throw it." He said evenly, deliberately, knowing his apathetic response was irritating her.

She threw a second book, a large hard cover tome, pages coloured yellow in age and musty, something more fruitful and meaningful than a pointless novel and this time it met its mark. It took him over the side of the couch, his laptop falling out of his lap unto the padded upholstery and she smiled.

"There," she said with force, "_happy reading_."

.:Owari:.

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